A prominent Rhode Island Democrat is facing fresh scrutiny after bodycam footage captured her unleashing a belligerent, profanity-laced tirade during a late-night DUI traffic stop — repeatedly invoking her political status and race as officers tried to do their jobs.
The woman at the center of the incident is Maria Bucci, chair of the Cranston Democratic Committee, who was pulled over shortly after midnight last Thursday on an East Greenwich roadway. The footage shows Bucci berating officers, calling one a rude name and demanding recognition.
“You know who I am, right?” Bucci asked officers as they attempted to conduct a field sobriety test.
“I don’t know who you are,” one officer replied. “And I frankly—”
“You don’t care, right?” Bucci snapped back, cutting him off.
“No, I really don’t,” the officer said.
As the encounter escalated, Bucci, who is white, attempted to frame the stop through a racial lens, claiming she was being treated leniently because of her identity.
“God forbid I was a black person, I’d be arrested,” she said, according to bodycam footage obtained by GoLocalProv. When an officer objected, she doubled down, saying she felt “bad for the people that are not in my position.”
The outbursts continued as officers instructed her to walk in a straight line. At one point, Bucci shouted to her cousin, who was waiting in the vehicle, to “call my husband right now, and call the attorney general and everybody else in town.”
Moments later, after repeatedly ignoring instructions and continuing to needle police, Bucci was placed in handcuffs.
“You’re a [expletive], give me the camera, you’re a [expletive],” she said. “I am not drinking. You’re a loser.”
According to court filings cited by the Boston Globe, Bucci, 51, has been charged with driving under the influence, first offense, blood alcohol concentration unknown — a misdemeanor under Rhode Island law.
A police report states officers “immediately detected a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emanating from inside the vehicle.” Officers also noted that Bucci’s eyes were “severely bloodshot, glassy, and watery,” and that she was slurring her speech while yelling and spitting during the encounter.
At the beginning of the stop, Bucci told officers she had consumed one glass of wine at a Christmas party.
Bucci is a familiar figure in Democratic politics in the Ocean State. She previously ran unsuccessfully for Cranston mayor in 2020 and for state representative in 2024. She was also recently praised publicly by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Helena Buonanno Foulkes, who thanked Bucci on Instagram earlier this month for hosting a political gathering in Cranston.
Neither the state Democratic Party nor Buonanno Foulkes’ campaign immediately responded to requests for comment. The footage, however, shows Bucci appearing to lean on her perceived status as the stop unfolded — only to be told, bluntly, that it carried no weight.
By the end of the night, the politics were gone, the handcuffs were on, and the camera kept rolling.
